


I Had A Dream About You

by Lwoorl



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff, M/M, Timkonweek2019, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, can be read as platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 11:21:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20081368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lwoorl/pseuds/Lwoorl
Summary: In a world where soulmates share their dreams, Tim Drake has never had a single dream in his life.Until now.





	I Had A Dream About You

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the day 5 of the timkon week ❤️  
✨Can be read as romantic or platonic. ✨

Tim doesn't remember his dreams. Not even once. Since he's a kid the moment his head touches the pillow he just closes his eyes and wakes up, like a blink, not a single memory of what happened during the eight or so hours he was out. 

He has tried everything he can think of, all the tricks he could find, studying his sleep cycle, getting a dream journal, meditation exercises, playing music while he sleeps, mentalization before going to bed, going to sleep at different times, but nonetheless, the journal stays empty and his dreams remain little more than a skip button. 

It's frustrating, to say the least. Specially with how much importance everyone seems to give theirs: With Dick religiously filling his own journal every morning; With Steph always telling him about what wacky adventure she and this one girl Cass went on last night;  _ Even Bruce.  _ He tries to downplay it, but Tim's noticed he goes to sleep early the 15th of each month. Always, no matter what else is going on.

When he was younger, it used to make him sad, angry too, so much he couldn't watch most romcoms and would leave the room as soon as someone even so much as touched the topic. Now... Now it just is a thing he's come to accept. It's not that he doesn't  _ remember _ his dreams, he just doesn't  _ have _ any.

_ His soulmate probably died when Tim was a toddler. _

What does it matter, anyway? He's Robin.  _ The boy wonder. _ He fights villains that go from the normal street thug to aliens and gets to work alongside Batman. Why would he need to dream? He's already  _ living _ a dream!

He doesn't care anymore. He doesn't. It sounds like a pain anyway, what with the possibility for nightmares or embarrassing memories showing up, does he really want someone to be able to know all that? Not to mention compromising his secret identity. Hell no. It's better if he doesn't dream.

And then one night Tim has a dream and goes into full on crisis mode. Like a moron. 

He doesn't realize he's dreaming at first. He goes to sleep, then opens his eyes, and finds himself inside a tiny, cramped white space, barely big enough for him to stretch his legs. 

He puts his ear against one of the walls, the one at his right, trying to see if he can hear something, figure out where he is, what happened, who took him, and has to quickly recoil when he hears a  _ loud  _ beeping sound. It goes away after he stops touching the wall, and he soon realizes he only can hear it when resting his head against it. 

The other walls give other sounds, at his right the beeping sound, at his left what sounds like people, whispering too low to be understood. Behind him running water, and the front a beating heart. 

He wakes up at that point. At first not knowing what to think, he was in his bed, then trapped in that tiny cage, then back home. It takes him an embarrassingly long amount of staring at the ceiling to realize it was a dream. 

The realization has him jumping from his bed with a newfound sense of urgency, reaching for the forgotten journal in the last drawer of his nightstand. He quickly writes the experience down, adding as many details as possible for such a minimalist dream. It ends taking five pages. 

He spends the rest of that day thinking about it, all the while reading what he wrote in the journal over and over and over again. He's sure it was a dream, there's no other explanation. This might be the first time he has one but he has a good idea of what they're supposed to be like and the experience fits the description. 

Why now? Why not before? He needs to learn more about what's going on. He leaves patrol as soon as he can without raising suspicious and runs back home, for once in his life excited to go to bed.

Again, he doesn't realize he's dreaming. Doesn't even remember he was supposed to investigate something. He's in his house, the dining room, but somehow the table looks more like the manor's than his. 

He's eating breakfast with his parents, sitting on a highchair as his little feet fail to reach the floor, clumsily shoving cereal into his face as mom and dad talk in unintelligible voices, unaware anything is wrong, ignoring the upside down servants walking on the ceiling and how nothing can be seen through the windows. His attention only moves from the food when he hears something coming from the living room, and, curious, hops off the chair and goes to investigate.

In front of the TV, sitting on the couch, is a little kid, about Tim's age. With dark hair and blue eyes, paying close attention to the screen. 

"Hi." Tim greets, as he moves to sit next to the boy. In the TV, a number of scientists with white coats walk from one extreme of the screen to the other, and then back again, loudly chattering in a language he doesn't understand. "What are you watching?" 

The boy barely acknowledges his presence with a weak wave, and then his attention is back on the TV. 

"This is boring." Tim decides after the scientists complete the circle of walking from one side to the other for the fifth time, and without asking for permission (It's his house anyway) reaches for the controller and switches the channel to Cartoon Network, where a caricature of Batman and Robin are beating up a clown. 

"Hey!" The other kid finally speaks. "I was watching that!" He takes the remote and puts it back in the scientists channel, Tim frowns, and switches it again. 

They start fighting over the control of the TV, the remote moving from one pair of hands to another, the screen flashing images that go from nature documentaries to adult movies to the autopsy of a dog, until the other kid gasps and jumps from his seat, effectively making the control fall to the ground.

Tim stares at his face, those blue eyes wide open as he looks at the screen, and then sees what's got the boy so interested. They're back at Cartoon Network, but by now Superman has entered the scene, smiling to the camera as he flies with some bad guys hanging from his hands, tossing them over the jail, where they enter through the ceiling and directly into their cells. 

The remote is still lying on the floor, but they ended watching what Tim wanted to, so he supposes it's fine. He puts his feet on the couch, like he's been told so many times not to, so he's able to hug his knees, and lets his attention get lost in the cartoons. 

He wakes up when his alarm goes on, and, like yesterday, quickly writes the dream down. 

The following week goes pretty much the same way, he goes to sleep, and then forgets he's sleeping. He only meets the boy he supposes is his soulmate other two times, one time they're swimming inside an ocean of clear liquid, the other they play at the park near Tim's school, always being reduced to a little kid in both body and mind, just like the first time. 

When they don't meet, he wanders into the dream space without doing much of anything. It's incredibly easy to tell apart which ones are his and which ones come from the boy. Tim's dreams tend to be boring and basic, usually a replay of a memory with minor details altered, meanwhile his soulmate's are abstract to the point of being ridiculous, filled with white spaces and black spaces and all kinds of strange sounds and shapes. 

He thinks about him, his soulmate, and decides that while Tim is deaged into a kid when they meet, the other boy probably is as young as he seems. It would explain it, why he's only dreaming now. He never bothered to consider the possibility of his soulmate not having been born yet. In fact, he himself being younger in his dreams is likely a direct effect of the kid's age, a subconscious attempt at evening out.

It's odd, but not unheard of, having a soulmate so far away in terms of age. The kid can't be older than five. So it's most likely a platonic soulmate. 

Tim's fine with that, he's just happy to know he has a soulmate after all. He wonders what kind of relationship they're supposed to have, he's way older than him, but not old enough to end turning into something like a parent, so probably a teacher-student or older brother-little brother kind of thing. Maybe similar to how Dick treats him... It would be nice. 

After the fifth time they find each other, playing soccer on a forest, almost a month after the first dream, Tim starts trying again those mentalization exercises. 

He wants to ask him questions, to know who he is, but any time they get together he gets lost into the dream's go-with-the-flow atmosphere and forgets to collect any information whatsoever. And trying to research him in the real world without even knowing his name has proved pretty much impossible.

Is it creepy he wants so badly to find information on a little kid? It probably is, but he has a good reason to do so.  _ He's worried.  _

It would be hard not to notice how much some themes repeat in the kid's dreams, as abstract as they are. People with long white coats, the smell of hospitals, the sound of machines. Not to mention he doesn't seem to go to sleep at any regular schedule Tim's been able to make out, based on when and at what times their encounters have been. 

He might be sick. In which case he wants to help him. Or it might be something darker. In which case he wants to help him even more. 

...Or it might be something as inofensive as his parents working as doctors, in which case he will look like an idiot. Nonetheless, he needs to find out. 

So he repeats "I will remember I'm dreaming." Again and again before going to bed, and makes sure to check every four hours his fingers don't pass through his palm when he pushes his hands together. He gets lost in the flow other two times, going on an adventure to pick up insects in Alfred's garden and playing hopscotch in the white floor of a lab, before he finally is able to meet with the kid while staying focused.

They're at a Caribbean beach, a memory from one of the few times his parents let him join one of theirs trip. "Help me make a sand castle!" His soulmate says, and Tim loses no time in collecting buckets and shovels. 

It's when they're done with the central building, adding small towers around the structure, that Tim stops to look at his hands. His too little hands, and out of habit pushes his thumb against his wrist. It clips right through it, and immediately his too small hands are replaced by ones with the correct size. 

"What happened?!" The kid gapes, letting one of the buckets fall. His expression confused and surprised, maybe scared too. 

"I remembered this is my real age." Tim answers, and the boy wrinkles his nose in disdain. 

And now that he can be here with all his faculties restored, Tim realizes he wasn't just imagining it, the person who stands in front of him isn't five years old anymore, can't be younger than twelve. The boy really has been growing up in these three months. Maybe he was wrong about this being the kid's real age? Or is it Tim's fault? An attempt at looking older to even out? A kid wanting to grow up quicker? Dreams are too weird to really know.

"My name is Tim. What is yours?" He finally,  _ finally,  _ is able to ask.

The boy opens his mouth once, twice, before frowning and crossing his arms. "...Superman?" He mutters, and it sounds more like a question than an answer. 

"Your name is Superman." Tim repeats, an sceptical eyebrow raised. 

"Yes?"

"No, it isn't." 

"It is!" The kid replies, more sure this time.

"That's not a name!" 

And so on. They end spending the entire night on a 'yes' 'no' 'ye-es' 'no-o' argument and Tim wakes up growling and pinching the space between his eyes. 

The days pass, and then days become weeks, and Tim still isn't able to figure anything out about the kid- A  _ boy _ now. He's kept growing, each time a couple of inches taller, a couple of years older. It takes around three more months before Tim's age stops changing in the dreams, and another one for the now teenager to be taller than Tim. 

They keep playing anything from tag to videogames, or just sitting at an approximation of a movie theater to watch what Tim more or less remembers of a movie. He's nice, and fun, and kind, and doesn't mind listening to Tim ramble about his day-time life, always leaning forward as if those common stories of school and city life were the most interesting thing he's ever heard. 

He's also  _ so damn upbeat, _ and always drags Tim into exploring this and that place of his memories, to the point sometimes he wakes up more tired than when he went to sleep. Still, he can't deny he's pulling all nighters less often now, not quite willing to skip a night worth of sleep. 

It's around the time Tim's completed his third dream journal (And wasn't it a weird emotion he had when he finished the first one) when his soulmate's dreams suddenly change. The white ceilings and tiled walls suddenly replaced by city landscapes under blue skies. 

Tim doesn't even have time to properly pay attention to the shift when one day, while watching the news, he finds the boy's face in the TV.

_ Superboy. _ A new superhero who appeared recently in Metropolis. A quick look into Bruce's database is enough for everything to fall into place. A clone made by Cadmus, from Clark Kent's DNA. He feels stupid all the sudden for not considering looking for him outside of civilians.  _ It just makes sense,  _ the accelerated growing, the lack of personal information, the absolutely  _ bizarre _ dreams. Of course he was a clone. 

And then he feels angry.  _ He could have said something.  _ Tim was worried goddamnit! And he shared his life with Superboy, showed him his damn memories, told him about his life, didn't he deserve to at the very least know? Weren't they friends?

But then again… Then again, he hasn't really told his soulmate he's Robin. Miraculously evading showing him anything directly related to that, like his subconscious mind knew he couldn't share the secret. Not even asleep. So maybe that isn't quite fair. 

He goes to sleep that day feeling frustrated and uncomfortable, and finds himself on top of a tail building, uniform on. 

"Hi." Superboy greets, sitting at the edge of the rooftop, wearing the costume Tim thought was completely imaginary so far, and the jacket he's started sporting ever since his dreams moved away from laboratories and amniotic fluid. 

"Hey." He says back, moving to sit next to him. The city below them is a mix of Gotham and Metropolis, buildings pulled from one and the other at random. The sky on top is kind of the same story, patches of blue and black, like someone tried assembling a single puzzle from the pieces of two different ones. 

In short. It's a beautiful sight. 

"So…" Superboy starts, eyeing Tim up and down. "You're one of the capes?"

"Robin." He nods. Only feeling slightly guilty at sharing the secret. But then again, it's his  _ soulmate.  _ He thinks Bruce might forgive him, just this once. "And you are one of the capes too, for what I can see." 

Superboy smiles, although it seems a bit awkward, and tips his head. "I guess so, yes." 

They fall silent and stare at the city for what feels like hours before one of them speaks again.

"You're angry." Superboy says, not quite looking at him. 

"I'm not." Tim sighs. "I'm… Frustrated. You were trapped in a laboratory for  _ months _ weren't you? You could have said something,  _ anything.  _ I would have helped." 

"Sorry." 

"I was worried, do you have any idea how  _ weird  _ your dreams were during that time?!"

"...Sorry." 

"And also-!" Tim takes a deep breath and counts to five. "It's alright." 

"Look, I really  _ am _ sorry, it just didn't cross my mind."

"It's ok." He sighs. "Look, Superboy-"

"Kon."

"Huh?" When Tim looks up, his soulmate's scratching the back of his neck, his face slightly pink. 

"My name. It's… New, Superman gave it to me. Kon-El, Kon for short." 

"Oh." Tim blinks, and the corners of his mouth pull up without his consent. "Kon then… Kon." He says, trying the new word out. It's strangely fitting, he thinks. 

Kon nods, also smiling. There's a beat and he asks. "Have you ever flied before?" 

Tim stares, taken aback by the sudden topic change. "In a plane." 

Kon's smile morphs into a full on grin then. He stands up, and takes a step back. Tim reaches in instinct to catch him, but instead of falling from the roof Kon just stands in the middle of the air.

Right, dream logic. And also kryptonian DNA. 

"Com' here!" Kon says, extending one hand forward towards him. Tim eyes it, then eyes the city below, it's a long way down. But then again, he will just wake up if he falls, right? 

"Fine." He takes Kon's hand. 

It's… Weird, stepping into nothing and not falling down, but not bad. He thinks he gets the appeal, why flying is such a common dream.

"Cool, right?!" Kon smiles, tugging him closer, higher. He doesn't really need him to stay afloat, it's a dream, after all, but even so, they don't let go of each other as they soar through the sky, moving in circles like in a dance. 

Kon raises his arm and Tim  _ spins  _ and they're really dancing now, stepping around each other on the air. 

"Is it like this when awake?!" Tim finds himself asking. Kon laughs.

"Oh, absolutely!" 

They keep spinning and swinging around each other between smiles and giggles until it's time to wake up. It's perfect, sappy and dramatic and at some point a full on music number plays in the background to accompany. Because of course it does.

When Tim's alarm goes off, he has a ridiculous grin plastered on his face that doesn't wear off until the next night.

"We should meet in real life." Tim says one day. 

Kon looks up from what he's doing, and Tim still isn't sure what exactly  _ that _ is, he's holding a crab with chopsticks, looking at something under his belly. "What isn't real about this?" He asks. Tim raises an eyebrow and gestures around them, a restaurant teetering on a crystal cliff, because Kon's dreams will never stop being abstract nonsense and giving him more life experience only made it worse. 

"Yeah, fair enough." Kon shrugs, putting the poor crab down. It runs to the edge of the table and falls from the cliff like a lemming. "As capes? Or civilians?" 

"I honestly don't know." Tim answers, leaning on their table. "I just want to meet you." 

"You know, that's a really cute sentence."

"Oh, shut up." 

"Tomorrow is good for you?" 

"Hum." Tim thinks it over. Tomorrow is a school day. "In the evening, maybe night."

"So capes, then." 

"Batman won't let you enter his city though." He sighs. He really should just bite the bullet and tell Bruce about Kon. But also, ugh.  _ Bruce. _ "This weekend I could go to Metropolis."

"Yeah?"

"I can tell B I got something to do there. So still capes." 

"This weekend then." Kon smiles at him, blinding and warm, like always. "Deal?"

"Deal." 

Kon's late. 

Tim lied to Bruce about why he was here. Almost crashed his bike to get to the place they agreed in time. And Kon is almost twenty minutes _ late.  _

"Tim!" He hears him before he sees him, as Superboy lands some meters away from him.

Tim opens his mouth to complain for the delay, but before he can say anything there's a pair of strong arms around him. "Oh my God it's really you!" 

"You're late." He huffs. Trying to be angry, and yet he can't avoid raising his arms to return the hug, placing them around Kon's back.

"And I'm really sorry!" His dumb soulmate exclaims, tightening the hug, so Tim has to tap him on the shoulder when it becomes hard to breathe. Kon quickly let's go and takes a step back. 

"I hope you have a good excuse." 

"I do! I just couldn't get my hair to look right and… Uh…" He trails off, probably finally realizing that a dumb excuse now that he's under Tim's glare. "Uh… Look..." 

Tim sighs. Smiles. And moves a hand to mess up Kon's beloved hairstyle. "It's fine." He says as he does so and the indignated squeak Kon gives him almost makes the waiting worth it. Almost.

They end just talking while sitting at a rooftop, their feet dangling from the edge. And anytime their ankles or pinkies touch Tim feels his heart soar. 

Sure, it's pretty much the exact same thing they do in dreams, and the scenery isn't nearly as interesting as those, but still. There's a layer of  _ realness  _ Tim can feel permeating the interactions and it's got his heart thundering into his chest. 

"Hey." Kon says at some point. A smirk on his face. "Have you ever flied before?" 

"Only in my dreams." He answers, and it takes Kon no time to jump into the same position he took last time. Standing on the air next the rooftop, one arm stretched in front of him, palm up. 

It takes Tim a bit longer than last time. He looks down, at the streets bellow.  _ Not waking up this time if I fall.  _ And taking a deep breath finally stands up. "If you drop me, Batman's going to kill you." He promises, as he takes Kon's hand. 

It takes a bit of fumbling around and a lot of yelps and threats before they find a comfortable position, now that Tim can't fly on his own. Tim puts his arms around Kon's neck, dangling from it, as Kon puts his arms on the small of his back, pressing him against his chest. 

It's kinda uncomfortable, really, hanging from Kon like that, terrifying, too, having to trust into this absolute moron not to let him fall, and worst of all there isn't any music to accompany it this time around. But soon they're spinning through the air, Tim's head resting on Kon's chest, Kon having moved one arm to hook it more securely around Tim's waist. It's not perfect, and it's certainly not a dream. 

Tim wouldn't change it for anything in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> As always please remember to comment! 💕💕💕


End file.
